From Reuters:

LONDON - Scientists warned on Wednesday that the world is on the brink of a major biodiversity crisis and called for the creation of an international body to advise governments on how to protect the planet’s ecosystems.

“All the scientific evidence points to the fact that whatever measure of vulnerability you take, whether it is local populations, species or ecosystem, we know that the rate at which we are altering them now is faster than it has been in the past,” Georgina Mace said in an interview.

Mace, director of science at the Institute of Zoology in London, is one of 19 scientists from 13 countries who signed a declaration published in the journal Nature explaining why an intergovernmental body is needed.

Read the entire article.

This is important news in and of itself, since publication further validates the study's conclusions and corroborates the findings of yet another new study that last month reached the very same conclusion.

The news is even more interesting, however, because the study's author, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist named Tim King, obtained the exact same specimens that Rob Roy Ramey II used when he began his campaign to eliminate the Preble's meadow jumping mouse's protection. This is important news because King also found what he very politely referred to as "a systemic error in the data." You want to guess what that means? It means that 13 of the 15 mouse specimens he looked at do not contain the genetic sequences reported by Ramey. There is a range of possible explanations for how Ramey might have reported finding genetic sequences that don't seem to exist, but none of them are very flattering for Ramey. So how does Ramey respond? From today's Rocky Mountain News:

The new findings are just "chest-pounding overstatements."

The U.S.D.I. researcher's "station in life seems to be to do scientific colonoscopies."

Almost from the day Ramey first began trying to remove Endangered Species Act protection for the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, scientist after scientist began raising serious concerns about Ramey's methods and his conclusions. These are credible, professional, respected scientists, but rather than addressing their legitimate concerns, Ramey's response has consistently been to deride, attack, and insult. And now it turns out that Ramey's data itself is corrupt.

Where does that leave us?

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is supposed to make a final decision about delisting the Preble's meadow jumping mouse later this summer. If the Bush Administration really cared about good science, as they are so fond of claiming, and if they had any respect at all for the law, their decision would be a no-brainer. Alas, we all know this was never about the science or the law. This is about politics and money.

British Columbia is a bit out of our region but we love spreading good news so here goes: The Vancouver Sun last week reported on the addition of 45 species to British Columbia's list of protected at-risk plants and wildlife.  Canadian conservationists are appropriately skeptical about the on-the-ground impact of the new list since neither Canada nor British Columbia have anything quite like our own Endangered Species Act, but acknowledging species that are in trouble is always a critical first step to effective conservation and our congrats go to the folks that made this happen.

If you haven't yet seen the Competitive Enterprise Group's television spots attacking Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" (which opened in Denver last week) it might be worth your time. As Pat Joseph wrote in the Sierra Club's Compass blog, "You really have to watch the ads for yourself to appreciate just how farcical they are. It's hard to believe they're not meant as self-parody."

You can view the two ads from the Competitive Enterprise Group’s website, and you might also check out Global Warming Watch's counter-ad.

Incidentally, "An Inconvenient Truth" was the 11th highest-grossing film last weekend (nearly $1.5 million), up 9% from the week before as it expanded its run to 122 theaters. Its per theater average blew the socks off of everything out there except the brand new animated release Cars. It's now showing in Denver at the Mayan.

It’s called Denver Ozone.  Check it out.